Courtesy LAN Architecture

Mirror Tower is a key interested feature of  this 35,000 sq.m. 486 MINA EL HOSN project in Beirut Lebanon, Designed by French Architects Firm  LAN Architecture, followings are the architect statement

The city that wouldn’t disappear

As we well know, every city is singular. Yet clearly some are more so than others. Beirut is a unique urban phenomenon, literally inhabited by its history, and with each successive war or occupation finding the strength to combat its disappearance.

Courtesy LAN Architecture

The 486 MINA EL HOSN, the ‘mirror-tower’ designed by LAN, is to be built in the port area, opposite the Murr Tower, the shell-riddled building that has come to symbolise the civil war. The tower is absolutely novel in concept: the building’s skin will reflect the city surrounding it. One will be able to see it from everywhere, and everywhere one’s view will bounce off its mobile surface into the surrounding city, showing Beirut in all its myriad facets.

And of course behind this innovative technology lies a guiding idea: the impressive outline of 486 MINA EL HOSN, soaring above the skyline, will enable a kind of moving and poetic visual reconstitution of the city – a way of making Beirut itself, its light, diversity, districts and cultures, the tower’s very substance.

Courtesy LAN Architecture

The risk lay in constructing a new monument, a new prisoner of the city’s oppressive memory. True, the tower recreates the diverse histories and cultures that have made and are still making the city, but the building is a living, animated, changing entity. Its envelope will be an integral part of the city’s physical reality, giving it back a body, reflecting its myriad facts. In doing so, it will open up an invisible inner space, strike chords within us, almost effacing itself to become an active agent in Beirut’s reconciliation with itself.

Analysis
Identification of a city

What is a city? Talking about Beirut, one has to consider not a single context but a multiplicity of contexts.

At the outset, there are evidently the multiplicity, plurality and divisions that are part of the city’s very substance. With the passing years, Beirut has metabolised the communities that have forged Lebanon’s exceptional and tumultuous life into its urban structure, providing a geography and territory for all, each with their own lifestyle, culture and architecture. One only has to cross the city from north to south or east-west to savour the many perfumes of this unique assemblage. At a distance of hardly a kilometre, one sometimes has the impression of being at the other end of the world.

Courtesy LAN Architecture

The concept
From private to public, from vertical to horizontal

The 486 MINA EL HOSN is set in an area near the port close to the Marina and the Solidere district, on a plot flanked by Fakhreddine Street and Omar Daouk Street.

In a district already occupied by high-rise buildings, there was never question of merely building another tower, but rather of fashioning a new urban space, combining private habitat and public circulation, verticality and horizontality.

Courtesy LAN Architecture

The 486 MINA EL HOSN project is composed of three elements:

* The Tower proper is the project’s central and most visible element. The novel design of its mirror-envelope reflects views of the city back towards the city, enabling a visual reconstruction of its manifold identity.

Courtesy LAN Architecture

* The Base of the tower provides its residents with a public space playing with horizontality to create circulation and meeting places on a human scale, including a shopping mall, a public roof garden and pedestrian alleys.
* The five Blocks are intermediary residential spaces, imagined on the model of the oriental house. Acting as an interface between the project’s two other elements, they play on the dichotomy between exterior and interior.

The TOWER

The other side of the mirror / Visually reinventing the city. The project’s central element, the tower, enables a visual reinvention of the city.

The tower is the central element of 486 MINA EL HOSN. Its insertion in a district already populated with towers and steeped in history and symbols, prompted an in-depth reflexion on the project’s meaning. It was particularly necessary to create a dialogue with the Murr Tower, a monumental vestige of the civil war and one of the city’s iconic symbols.

But one had to go further than this, to remove the tower from its immediate physical surroundings and integrate it into a broader environment encompassing the entire city, yet do this without resorting to gigantism. Hence the fundamental idea of ‘meta-territory’ which led to the concept of the tower’s envelope as a means of visually reinventing the city, visually reconnecting urban elements beyond the tower’s immediate physical and material surroundings.

The result is an immaterial, constantly changing object, an architecture of lightness, glass and finely hatched steel whose game consists in effacing the building’s tangible limits by rendering the perception of a solid object superfluous within the poetics of the blurred and evanescent.
The city of Beirut, historically marked by division, can also see the tower as an animated mirror reflecting its living and tormented history and geography.

Courtesy LAN Architecture

Interior, exterior: effacing limits

The building, 142 metres high, its structured around a cruciform volume sheathed by a solar protection based on a 25×25m square unit. The facades of the volume at the heart of the tower are in black concrete, and the design of the openings follows the functional logic of the living units. The exterior skin consists of sliding perforated sheet metal panels with a mirror finish, acting as reflectors and protection against heat but also allowing light to enter.

Our vision of the tower is reflected away to other parts of the city but can also penetrate within. The tower’s cross-shaped ground plan frees its corners and imbues it with lightness and evanescence. Its limits are effaced and only the building’s core has substance. Depending on the play of natural light and viewpoints, the tower can physically reinvent itself in the changing light and points of view.

The Bankmed Foundation will occupy the tower’s first six levels, with an access from the street. The entrance hall to the apartments, imbricated at double height, enables access from the base’s inner street. There is a service level between the foundation and apartment levels.

The surface areas of the 20 apartments (duplex and triplex) range from 750 to 1200 m². A lift provides direct access to each apartment, which are entered via a ‘lobby’ acting as a filter between public and private spaces.

Courtesy LAN Architecture

The BASE

Recreating a public space
Commercial units, a roof garden, and pedestrian alleys: the tower’s base opens up a circulation area for the inhabitants of Beirut.

One of the project’s stakes was to materialise the renaissance of public and shared spaces in Beirut, after years of inter-community conflict for the control of city territory. Today, the development of new places of exchange (business centres, large hotels, etc.) is accompanying the modernisation of Lebanese society and its insertion into the global economy.

The base’s three levels form a 10,000 m² ensemble of commercial units ranging from 300 to 1,200 m², a public roof garden and pedestrian alleys, inspired by Beirut’s traditional urban morphology. Located on one of the city’s few green belts, the project has taken this specificity into account by ensuring that it respects the terrain’s natural slopes and differences in level.

Courtesy LAN Architecture

The BLOCKS

Imagining tradition
The five 35,000 m² residential buildings were imagined as a series of houses arranged vertically

Reinventing an oriental habitat…
Residential living concerns lay at the heart of LAN’s project, which for the blocks drew inspiration from various modalities of Mediterranean habitat.

It was a question both of providing a truly appropriable architecture, in harmony with contemporary lifestyles, and of revisiting historic filiations, in essence, of reinventing tradition.

Oriental patio houses, in the extraordinary relationship between exterior and interior that they manage to create, provide a generous living space rich in possibilities.

Courtesy LAN Architecture

Photo courtesy Tony Fretton Architects

Mace Group has completed the new British Embassy in Warsaw on time with no reportable accidents. The 4,300 sq m building opened for business on 28th July. The project got underway in January 2006 and a joint team drawn from the group’s London and Warsaw offices successfully delivered the building with a professional team comprising both British and Polish designers and sub-contractors, under the design team leadership of Tony Fretton Architects. Following is Architect StatementSet in its own grounds facing onto Ulica Kawalerii on one side and a park on the other in an area of the city devoted to embassies, the building has a serene and formal quality. Its long form is centralized by an attic in an elementally neo-classical way and underlined by the longer figures of the walls and railings enclosing the site. The building is explicit in its conservation of energy; its glass elevations function as the outer skin of a double façade, which provides substantial thermal insulation in winter and relieves heat in the summer. The outer layer, delineated by pale bronze aluminium mullions and mirror glass, reflects the sky and trees of the surrounding gardens. Behind this is a more substantial façade of windows set between solid piers and spandrels in a modulated composition of a similar palette. The pale polychromy of this arrangement is a distant relative othe painted stucco buildings of the school of Schinkel, which can be seen across Europe from the Hague to Oslo and here in Warsaw.

Photo courtesy Tony Fretton Architects

One enters the Embassy grounds through a Gate House on Ul. Kawalerii. A carriageway leads to a stone clad porte cochère at the centre of the façade. The ground floor is reserved for public activities and features a large space for exhibition and events, and a café that opens onto the garden. Occupying the remainder of the ground floor is the area for Consular Section and UK Border Agency complete with a public waiting area accessed via its own entrance from a route through the grounds. The administrative offices of the Embassy are located on the first and second floor. With an acoustically absorbent ceiling, carpeted floor and double façade, the offices are places of calm efficiency. Workspaces are amply lit with daylight from the glass facades and two generous planted courtyards in the centre of the plan. In the attic at the second floor is the Ambassador’s suite, which looks out on either side to extensive roof terraces.

Photo courtesy Tony Fretton Architects

A variety of material finishes are used in the interior. Structural columns are expressed and the windows set between them have mullions and spandrels in light bronze anodised aluminium. The floors are terrazzo or carpeted. The foyer coat cupboard and café screen are made of walnut panels. Each floor has its own identity through the association between its parts and their relations to the outside world. Public spaces in the ground floor flow from one to another and into the grounds. Open office space in the first floor is given a degree of separation by the interior courts. In the comparatively small Ambassador’s suite the offices will have the scale and quality of cabinets, a theme that continues in the small spaces for sitting that are cut out from the wide areas of planting filling the roof terraces on either side. In its larger form the roof planting relates the terraces to the grounds around the Embassy and the park beyond. With these simple gestures, the Embassy maintains its role in the culture and fabric of Warsaw.

Photo courtesy Tony Fretton Architects

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Photo©Ali Daghigh

Fluid Motion Architects led by Catherine Spiridonoff  and Reza Daneshmir have recently updated with us the  Mellat Park Cineplex. It is located in the municipal district 3 of Tehran in an extended and indefinite piece of land with the area of 6000 sq m, has been designed and constructed in the far south-east side of Mellat Park..

With the total floor area of 15000 sq m, this project includes 4movie halls, each occupying 300 persons, and a small performance hall with the capacity of 30 persons, along with exhibition areas, restaurant, coffee shop, Book and CD store, offices and service areas.

Diagrams&Drawings©Fluid Motion Architects

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Regarding the long and indeterminate shape of the site and the possibility to place 2 movie halls on the ground floor and 2 other movie halls at the basement, the spatial organization of the project has been defined in a way to present an idea of space in accordance with the physical program and the structure of the project and also having interaction with the exquisite nature of the environment.

Photo©Ali Daghigh

Photo©Ardavan Bidgoli

Hence, by connecting the rotating slopes of the two movie halls along one another, an extensive covered plaza (Eyvan) was created which is the main achievement of this project for the city, and will be a place to talk, to exchange ideas, to celebrate an occasion and a variety of other cultural and social events.

Photo©Reza Daneshmir

The main attributes of this project can be shortened in 5 main issues:
1- Finding lost spaces in the city to rehabilitate them to active urban spaces.
2-Accordance with the park environment and the perspective of the mountains in the north of Tehran
3- Integration, Architecture, Structure and Program
4- Creating a dialogue with the city through the generation of urban open spaces (Eyvan).
5- Posing the issue of movement and time through the creation of a flexible and variable structure along the project by employing general ramps; the dynamism and change has been presented both conceptually and literally.

Photo©Ali Daghigh

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Photo©Ardavan Bidgoli

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About Fluid motion architects

Fluid motion architects, established by architects Catherine Spiridonoff  and Reza Daneshmir, is a young and influential office located in Tehran, Iran. The company provides design and consultancy services in various fields of architectural design and urban planning.

The company has managed to serve a position as one of the leading practices in the country with a number of its award winning projects which have set new standards through exploration of design approaches and innovative technical achievements.

Mellat Park Cineplex as one of the most important large scale projects of FMA has won the most prestigious domestic award (Memar awards) in 2008.

Photo courtesy of Axelrod Design

eHouse by Axelrod Design is a single family house that was inhabited in 2008 and borrows from two traditions in architecture – a Mediterranean aesthetic of sun and light and a minimalist discipline of line and plane.

The design exhibits a masterful use of that most modern of materials, concrete. The core of the house, both conceptually and structurally, is several vertical and horizontal planes. Conceptually, the vertical planes define the axes of the house and the horizontal planes the spatial volume. Structurally, the concrete elements support every other architectural surface, predominantly glass and drywall.

Photo courtesy of Axelrod Design

The extensive use of glass allows that most Mediterranean element, sunlight, to permeate into every room. Whether, direct, indirect, or filtered, light fills this house. Many smaller glazed areas reveal hidden views of exterior garden. A large 46ft expanse of glass floods the main living/dining/kitchen area with daylight. The entire 46ft window system can even be rolled back to create one super room of indoor and outdoor space.

Photo courtesy of Axelrod Design

In plan, the house is defined by two axes; one running lengthwise through the main living space and one perpendicular from the main entrance to the staircase. The longitudinal axis is reflected in the roof plane with a long skylight that runs the entire length of the house. The transverse axis is punctuated with a dramatic front entrance of horizontal wooden slats and cantilevered canopy.

The private sector of the house contains six bedroom/studies. The master bedroom, half a flight above the main level, appears to float above the rest of the house. Its cantilevered floor slab with 3 ft of vertical glass beneath it completes the illusion of lightness. Three children’s bedrooms are on the main level and two guest/ study rooms are placed on the lowest level.

The site is masterfully landscaped and includes several decks and a reflecting pool. Because the site is comprised of two standard lots, extensive outdoor space was available for these site amenities. The placement of fenestration within the house makes full use of the views to the outside and creates interior view corridors at every turn.

The large floor plan of 5,000 square feet gave expression to a flowing main level with ample opportunity for outdoor living. The beauty of the eHouse is the marriage of livability and minimalist/Mediterranean design sense.

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Courtesy Fars Studio Co.,Ltd.

Thailand-based firm Fars Studio has been named the winner in a national design competition for the Chao Phraya River Memorial and Museum in Nakorn-Sawan, Thailand. The competition was held by the Nakorn-Sawan Municipality and the Association of Siamese Architects to create a landmark symbol for the significance of the river in this region.At the confluence of four tributaries – - the Ping, Wang,Yom and Naan River – - the Chao Phraya River begins and forms itself as the largest and bloodline river in Thailand. Nakorn Sawan Municipality and theAssociation of Siamese Architects under Royal Patronage (ASA) launch this landmark competition to commemorate and to highlight the symbol of this River at the particular spot where it begins. This site has an extraordinary context: during the flood season, up to 9 meters differentiate between the low and high tide. The river on the Northern side of the island has a green color while the Southern side is red. After the confluence of both tributaries, the green and red colors still keep tracking along the Chao Phraya River to create a resonance stripe. This significant area not only has a colorful phenomenon but is also intertwined with the history of the Kingdom. Unfortunately, this area has been abandoned for quite a long time, as a result of the very different levels of the tide.

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Diagram Courtesy Fars Studio Co.,Ltd.

This landmark is designed to be situated on the tip of the island where the confluence takes place.  This is to revitalize the area while attracting both local people and tourists from elsewhere. In our opinion, the site itself is already a potential landmark; and that it just only needs a highlight in the form of an element that looks as modest as possible. Our purpose is to reflect the River’s chronicle, tradition and quality of life of the city based on the following conditions:

Courtesy Fars Studio Co.,Ltd.

Firstly, inside the Yom island, architecture becomes a complement to the nature; nothing can explain how beautiful the nature better than the river itself. In one axis, parallel to the River’s resonance stripe, we optimize numerous locations, elevation at appropriate angles on the site for people to perceive all the sceneries of the Rivers. In one route, the architecture leads the people to each interesting spot of key locations, such as:  the point where people see two rivers all together; the point where people can see the whole city around the area; and the point where people enjoy the scenery confluence.

Secondly, from the outer side of the island, the architecture becomes a symbol the river, in the form of weaving stripes. The bridge-like architecture accentuates visual connection between both sides of the

River, while actually creating physical connection between them allowing people to sail through, thereby making the visual connection alive during the high tide period: From symbol to physicalness.

Courtesy Fars Studio Co.,Ltd.

For us, the essence of the traditional Thai architectures is the attention their designers paid to the quality of the human scale. Therefore, we generate the form out of the two (2) above-mentioned conditions, the constraints and the outline pattern based on the perspective of Thai artistic/architectural elements.  They altogether form into the shape of the weaving stripes. Due to the availability of the local construction technology and the materials to provide appropriate resistance to the flood, concrete is a major structure on the area between the high and low tides; and steel is for the rest.The cladding for the stripes is a combination between copper panel and wood.

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About Fars Studio

Fars Studio established itself in the year 2009 by winning one of the most significant design projects in Thailand, which will turn into a landmark of the country.

As a Thailand-based multi-disciplinary design studio, Fars Studio is specialized on architecture, interior architecture, product and graphic design, especially a memorial/ museum type of architecture. In order to satisfy the world standards, we constantly practice ourselves through several competitions. As a small team with 6 members, enriched with work experiences at Skidmore, Owings and Merrill LLP (New York), and A49 Bangkok, Thailand), we have been working for projects in several countries, such as India, China, Vietnam, Turkey and the USA.

Copyright Andy Fisher Workshop Pte Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

Construction is scheduled to commence on the landmark 100,000 sq m corporate office development in Mumbai, India. Designed by Andy Fisher workshop, the development is set to house the corporate headquarters for Patel Engineering Ltd.The Clients passion for the outdoor environment ensured that the project embraced the integration of multi-level landscaped spaces within the built structures and helped secure the inclusion of the first naturally ventilated basement car park in Mumbai. High level link gardens and a rooftop nursery connect the horizontal towers and strengthen the buildings green credentials towards gaining a LEED Gold rating.

The design challenges the relationship between the three buildings and aims to reinforce the scale of the surrounding streetscape. Contrasting facade treatments distinguish the character of the front and rear buildings and the expression of the sculptural structural supports pays reference to the civil engineering heritage of the Client.

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Redefining the traditional theater—from top to bottom

DALLAS, OCT. 15, 2009 — During the AT&T Performing Arts Center’s Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre’s grand opening this week, audiences are discovering a 575-seat, “multi-form” theater that gives one of the country’s most innovative performing arts companies an unprecedented reconfiguration of both house and stage.

Unlike a typical theater, the Wyly positions back-of-house and front-of-house facilities above and beneath the auditorium instead of encircling it. Designed by REX/OMA, Joshua Prince-Ramus (Partner in Charge) and Rem Koolhaas, the new home of the Dallas Theater Center is thereby transformed into one large fly tower that provides an infinite variety of stage configurations, and liberates the performance chamber’s perimeter to allow fantasy and reality to mix when and where desired. The Wyly Theatre’s design was begun in 2004 by OMA New York, a firm owned equally by Prince-Ramus and Koolhaas. In 2006, Prince-Ramus bought Koolhaas out of the company and renamed the existing entity REX.

Prince-Ramus, who will give a lecture in the Wyly Theatre, October 16 at 2 p.m., comments, “The Wyly is a ‘theater machine’ that grants freedom to determine the entire artistic experience, from audience arrival to performance configuration to departure.”

The Dallas Theater Center’s previous accommodation, a makeshift residence located in a galvanized metal shed, liberated its users from the limitations imposed by a fixed-stage configuration and the need to avoid harming expensive interior finishes. The Wyly Theatre’s unprecedented “stacked” design meets two distinct challenges—it retains and refines the same freedoms that made the DTC’s original building a successful theater space and creates a new theatrical structure that combines flexibility with affordability.

The theater can be altered into a wide array of configurations—including proscenium, thrust and flat floor—empowering directors and scenic designers to choose the stage-audience configuration that fulfills their artistic desires, or to invent one of their own. Directors can incorporate the Dallas skyline and streetscape into performances at will, as the auditorium is enclosed by an acoustic glass façade with optional black-out blinds and panels that can be opened to allow patrons or performers to enter the auditorium directly from outside. The performance chamber is intentionally made of materials that are not precious to encourage alterations; the stage and auditorium surfaces can be cut, drilled, painted, welded, sawed, nailed, glued and stitched at limited cost.

On a Friday night, patrons can share Lear’s sorrow in a dark and quiet theater. Then Saturday evening, against the dramatic backdrop of the Dallas cityscape, the audience can join Vladimir and Estragon in their vigil for Godot, in an auditorium now stripped of its comforting cocoon.

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About REX

REX is an internationally renowned architecture and design firm based in New York. In addition to the AT&T Performing Arts Center’s Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre, other cultural projects by REX include Museum Plaza, a 62-story mixed-use skyscraper housing a contemporary art center in Louisville, Kentucky, and the new Central Library and Music Conservatory for the city of Kortrijk, Belgium. Current projects also include the Istanbul headquarters for Vakko and Power Media, Turkey’s preeminent fashion and media companies; the University of Louisville’s College of Business campus in Kentucky, and a line of public furniture for Belgian furniture company Quinze & Milan. REX recently placed second in both the international competition for the new Edvard Munch Museum in Oslo, Norway, and the Finnish Innovation Fund’s Low2No sustainable development competition in Helsinki, Finland.

Joshua Prince-Ramus is President of REX and Principal in Charge of all projects. Prince-Ramus was the founding partner of OMA New York—the American affiliate of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA)—and served as its Principal until he renamed the firm REX in 2006. While REX was still known as OMA New York, Prince-Ramus was Partner in Charge of the Guggenheim-Hermitage Museum in Las Vegas and the Seattle Central Library, hailed as Time magazine’s 2004 Building of the Year and by Herbert Muschamp in The New York Times as “the most exciting new building it has been my honor to review in more than 30 years of writing about architecture.” In 2005, the Seattle Central Library was awarded the top honors bestowed by the American Institute of Architects.

Photo©Jeff Goldberg/ESTO

Polshek Partnership’s new $23 million, 40,000-square-foot Vukovich Center at Allegheny College provides a state-of-the-art theater and communication arts teaching facility

The new Vukovich Center promotes the communication arts to Allegheny College and the greater Meadville community and creates a dynamic new center of student activity on campus.

Located on the northern edge of an existing green that was defined by the Museum on the south and Henderson Hall student activities building on the east, the building completes the quadrangle and defines it as an arts precinct. This site strategy takes advantage of well-travelled paths to encourage pedestrian circulation around and through the building, exposing the campus community to the theater arts. The building is conceived as a teaching theater, and its organization reinforces the preeminence of the creative process: traditional distinctions between “front of house” and “back of house” activities are minimized to illuminate the process of theater production, and the design fosters informal interaction and creative collaboration among faculty, students and staff.

Photo©Jeff Goldberg/ESTO

The building’s scale and materiality respond to that of the older buildings on campus without sacrificing the identity of this progressive communication arts program. Exterior materials – zinc, glass and red and dark gray iron-spot brick – accentuate the simple volumes of the building. Interior building materials and the theater’s technical equipment, which is celebrated rather than concealed, express a “refined black-box” aesthetic and an appreciation for the craft of theater production.

Photo©Jeff Goldberg/ESTO

The new 40,000 square foot facility, which is dedicated to teaching theater, television and related communication arts, includes rehearsal and instructional spaces, technologically-advanced video production facilities, a 250-seat theater for hosting performances and public events, related support spaces including scene and costume shops and dressing rooms, and faculty office spaces.

The new technologically-advanced facilities have enhanced collaboration among disciplines, enabled innovative new teaching methods, and allowed the department to enrich its programs in the communications arts.

Followings Photo©Aislinn Weidele/Polshek Partnership

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Design Team

Design: Brian Masuda, Todd Schliemann

Management: Molly McGowan, Timothy Hartung,

Project Team: Chris Andreacola, Allison Reeves, Charmian Place, Madeline Sun, Charles Brainerd, Matt Dionne, Amber Foo, Youngsun Ko, Ken Mito, Maura Rogers, James Sinks, Akari Takabayashi, Todd Van Varick

ABOUT POLSHEK PARTNERSHIP ARCHITECTS

Known for powerful building designs for cultural, educational, scientific and not-for-profit institutions, Polshek Partnership Architects is a 150-person studio based in New York City. Projects have been published internationally and recognized with numerous awards for design excellence and for their important contributions to the life of their cities and campus precincts. The firm’s research-based design process sponsors the creation of signature building designs that are expressive of an institution’s philosophy and vision and address each project’s unique programmatic, technical, aesthetic and environmental issues. For more information, visit www.polshek.com.

ABOUT ALLEGHENY COLLEGE

Located in Meadville, Pennsylvania, Allegheny College is a 2,100 student liberal arts college committed to academic excellence in an intimate setting. Students are encouraged to explore their talents and interests and to forge unique interdisciplinary combinations, and faculty are committed to undergraduate education. http://www.allegheny.edu

Photo©3LHD Architects

Architecture  from 3LHD has just been realized. It is Zamet Centre housing mixed use of function with the ribbon design connecting to site topography. Here is from 3LHD;

Situated in Rijeka’s quarter Zamet, the new Zamet Centre in complete size of 16830 m2 hosts various facilities: sports hall with max 2380 seats, local community offices, library, 13 retail and service spaces and a garage with 250 parking spaces.

Photo©Domagoj Blazevic

One third of the sports hall’s volume is cut in the ground, and the rest of the Centre is fully fitted into the surrounding landscape. The building’s main architectural element are ribbon-like linear stripes stretching over the site in a north-south direction, functioning at the same time as an architectural design element of the object and as a zoning element which forms a public square and a link between the park on the north and school and B. Vidas street on the south.

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Drawings ©3LHD Architects

The stripes were inspired by “gromača”, a type of rocks specific to Rijeka, which the centre artificially reinterprets by colour and shape. They are paved with 51.000 ceramic tiles designed by 3LHD and manufactured specially for the centre. The steel construction, girder span of 55 meters and their varying height allow the natural light illumination of the sports hall.

Photo©Domagoj Blazevic

The hall has been designed in accordance with the latest world sports standards for major international sports competitions. The concept is based on flexibility of space. Playground size is 46 x 44 meters, for two handball courts. The hall contains all the supporting facilities for professional training and competition, and the auditorium designed as a system of telescopic stands enables the transformation for everyday use as well as for other activities such as concerts, conferences and congresses. Selected interior materials – wood and acoustic panels, suggests that the hall is a large living room for athletes. The main access to the hall and other facilities is located west of the hall from the public square and from the underground garage.

Photo©Domagoj Blazevic & 3LHD

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Conceptual Diagram ©3LHD

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Project name: Zamet Centre
Program: public, cultural, business, sport
Status: completed
Project year: 2004
Project start date: 2004
Project end date: 01.2008
Construction start date: 21.12.2007
Construction end date: 10.09.2009
Address: B. Vidas Street, Zamet
City: Rijeka
Country: Croatia
Geolocation: 45-20-39 N, 14-24-0 E
Site area (m2): 12289
Size (m2): 16830
Volume (m3): 88075
Footprint (m2): 4724
Entry level: 103
Budget (EUR): 20 mil
Client: Grad Rijeka / Rijeka Sport d.o.o.
Author: 3LHD

Project team: Sasa Begovic, Tatjana Grozdanic Begovic, Marko Dabrovic, Silvije Novak, Paula Kukuljica, Zvonimir Marcic, Leon Lazaneo, Eugen Popovic, Nives Krsnik Rister, Andrea Vukojic
Colaborators: Mateo Bilus, Building Physics / Details; Berislav Medic, UPI-2M, Structural Engineering; Branko Čorko, IPZ-elektroinzenjering 22, Electrical Engineering; Mario Lukenda, Termoinzenjering-projektiranje d.o.o., HVAC; Slavko Simunović, HIT PROJEKT, MEP Engineering – Plumbing; Nenad Semenov, PASTOR, sprinkler installation; Rok Pietri, LIFT MODUS, elevators; Zeljko Arbanas, IGH PC Rijeka, diaphragm wall; Zeljko Stipković, Fire Protection; Ivica Babic, Zavod za zastitu na radu Rijeka, Safety at Work; Marija Babojelic, Special Consultant – Cost Consultant; Ines Hrdalo, Landscape Architect; Damir Bralić, Lana Cavar i Narcisa Vukojevic, signage and environmental graphics design; Nikola Durek, “Typonine Zamet” typeface design
Main contractor: GP Krk

Photo©Dietmar Tollerian

Hole 19 is a golf course’s clubhouse  designed  Xarchitekten from Austria. The golf course as an integrated design landscape and topography nestles up to the soft downs of the Mühlviertel. The club house merges with the landscape and integrates consistently into the natural surroundings, almost being completely absorbed by it.

Its outer and inner rooms are designed as a seamless transition into the golf course and become one with the surrounding sports grounds. The inner court offers possibilities for multi-functional activities in a sheltered atmosphere – as a garden for visitors as well as a location for events and award ceremonies. Towards the south west the court opens up into a covered terrace as far as the driving range. On the northern side, it serves as a reception area for players returning from the 18th Hole. The inner court presents itself as the “19th Hole” and the club house as the “19th Green” of the golf course and they resemble the Start as well as the Finish in the movement of club members and visitors.

Ecology
Openness and responsible action, not an elitist club life, are most important for the building project. This vision is implemented through the integration of the golf course into the landscape, through ecological care of the lawns and the concept of Zero Energy in the club house.

The concept of Zero Energy
The club’s existing area which is being restored produces unusually high energy surpluses. Therefore the use of this thermal waste with regard to the energy concept seemed to be a natural and logical consequence. The waste heat from the systems and devices in the restaurants is used optimally in the form of a multiple energy cascade. Warm and polluted air from the hottest points of the restaurant kitchen are sucked into a ventilation system, which is already a necessary part of the design, and which filters the air and sends it through to a hypocaust. This hypocaust heats the floor in the bar and restaurant area. A heat exchanger then releases 50% of the heat content of the slightly cooled air into the incoming fresh air. As the now considerably cooled exhaust air still contains a lot of energy, heating energy and warm water for the heating of the supply air and the floor heating in the changing rooms is won with the help of another air/water heat pump.

An ecologically reconcilable golf lawn
The golf lawn is kept free from weed in terms of a broader ecological approach solely through mowing and mechanical treatment without the use of herbicides surely a unique method on Europe’s golf courses.

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All Photo©Dietmar Tollerian

Location: Am Golfplatz1, A-4271 St. Oswald, Upper Austria
Client: Golf und Tourismusförderung
Architecture Competition 2002
Built-up area: 757 m²
Start of planning: 2002
Floor space: 489 m²
Start of construction: May 2003
Construction: Passivhaus
Handing over: Jun 2004